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Big Era 6 The Great Global Convergence 1400-1800 CE Landscape Teaching Unit 6.1 Oceanic Ventures And the Joining of the Continents 1400-1550 CE Table of Contents Why this unit? 2 Time and materials 2 Unit objectives 3 Author 3 The historical context 3 This unit in the Big Era timeline 8 Lesson 1: What Was Needed to Link Continents? 9 LessontT 2: Conquest of the Oceans: Where, How, and Why? 28 Lesson 3: Routes to Empire 50 Appendices: Maps of Atlantic and Indian Oceans 75 This unit and the Three Essential Questions 77 This unit and the Seven Key Themes 77 This unit and the Standards in Historical Thinking 77 Resources 78 Conceptual links to other lessons 80 World History for Us All A project of the UCLA Department of History’s Public History Initiative National Center for History in the Schools https://whfua.history.ucla.edu World History for Us All Big Era 6 Landscape 1 Why this unit? Long-distance maritime travel had a long history before the pioneering voyages that began in the late fifteenth century. The oceanic voyages of the 1400 to 1550 period, however, produced radically new information. First, mariners proved that there was open water to the south of Africa and that Europe could be linked to Asia by sailing east. Second, by sailing west to try to reach Asia, they discovered the Americas, two continents that peoples of Afroeurasia had previously not known about. And third, they demonstrated that the western Atlantic was not land-locked, that there was open water to the south of the Americas leading to the Pacific, and that Asia could indeed be reached directly from Europe as well as from the Americas by sailing west. The new sea routes discovered became increasingly busy channels of communication between continents and countries. Across these routes passed, by conscious intent or not, people, goods, plants, animals, technologies, ideas, and diseases. Contacts multiplied over a wider range of ecosystems, involving more and more diverse peoples. The advantages of this situation increasingly became slanted towards Europeans, though the process was gradual and did not become full-fledged until well beyond 1550. The development of our contemporary world of international organizations, multinational corporations, globalization, and both the spread of and resistance to European cultural ideas and institutions, was heavily influenced by what happened during this period of long-distance maritime exploration and encounter. Time and materials This unit is versatile. The variety and number of student readings, discussion questions, and activities provided are meant to give teachers choices in using materials most suited to their students, interests, and circumstances. Time taken for the unit will vary depending on teachers’ selections and on whether the Student Handouts and some of the activities are assigned as homework. Each of the three lessons in the unit may be used alone. Lesson 1 is likely to take the least time, and Lesson 3 the most. If the time available is severely limited, Lesson 2, which is the core of the unit, could be minimally covered in two class periods. Each of the other lessons would take an additional one to three class periods. No materials are needed other than pencil, paper, and Student Handouts. https://whfua.history.ucla.edu/ Page 2 World History for Us All Big Era 6 Landscape 1 Unit objectives Upon completing this unit, students will be able to: 1. Identify reasons why mariners undertook long-distance oceanic voyages both east and west during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and compare the Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish ventures. 2. Evaluate what promoted, and what hindered, the novel sea voyages and their achievements during the period 1400 to 1550. 3. Explain how, and with what results, Spain and Portugal turned the search for new sea routes into a grasp for empire in the sixteenth century. 4. Analyze ways in which each side viewed the other in the encounters of Africans, Native Americans, and Asians with Iberians (Spanish and Portuguese) during and after the latter’s maritime expeditions of 1400 to 1550. 5. Develop a toolkit for assessing the reliability of historical documents as evidence, and gain practice in its use. Author Anne Chapman taught high school history for more than thirty years. She served as a history education consultant to the College Board, the Educational Testing Service, and the National Center for History in the Schools. She was a member of the National History Standards’ world history task force. She wrote Coping with Catastrophe: The Black Death of the 14th Century, Women At the Heart of War: 1939-1945, and Human Rights In the Making: The French and Haitian Revolutions for the National Center for History in the Schools. She joined the World History for Us All team in 2001. The historical context Early modern beginnings: Thriving trade links connected various parts of Afroeurasia. About 1400 and for a considerable time thereafter, India and China were the hub and driving force of the Afroeurasian economy. They had the largest populations, the greatest wealth, and by far the largest volume of exchanges. A many-stranded commercial network linked them to Southeast and Inner Eurasia, the Islamic world, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the Mediterranean, and Europe. Long distance maritime trade from Asia to Europe was at this time largely in the hands of Muslim merchants, though people of many faiths and origins participated. They brought goods by ship from China, Indonesia, the Indian Ocean rim lands, and, on the final leg, from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf overland to ports on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean and to Egypt. From there ships from Venice, the leading southern European seaport, typically picked up the merchandise and distributed it to consumers in the rest of Europe. https://whfua.history.ucla.edu/ Page 3 World History for Us All Big Era 6 Landscape 1 More than just merchandise was passed along the routes. In addition to trade goods, political, cultural, economic, religious, technological information, and sometimes infectious microorganisms traveled as well. The flow of information favored collective learning among human communities and sparked innovation. Also, the exchange of diseases between densely- settled areas eventually increased the overall immunities of people in those areas. The groundwork was laid slowly for growth of European dominance and for an expanded and integrated world. Shifts in this long-established system took place as a result of the deliberate series of European long-distance sea voyages started in the fifteenth century by peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. They were not the only people to undertake such voyages. Imperially-sponsored Chinese navigators took part in a series of marine expeditions in the first third of the century. These voyages crossed the Indian Ocean and reached ports as far as Arabia and the East African coast. However, these destinations were not new to them, and their short-lived visits were not intended to establish permanent colonies or achieve conquests. Iberian mariners’ voyages, on the other hand, resulted in finding new sea routes, lands previously unknown to Europe, and a shift from a search for profits to a grasp for domination. The consequences that followed, both intentional and unintentional, gradually brought Europe from the edges to the center of the world’s trade. Over some 300 years, the opening of the oceanic passages contributed to the growth of European power on the world scene economically, politically, and culturally. They also helped promote: • Intensification of every kind of exchange worldwide. • Increased volume and speed of the movement of goods, peoples, information, and ideas. • That entanglement of diverse economies and societies, which we now call globalization. As a result of these developments, both diversity within groups and uniformity across groups have increased. So have inequality between and within groups, as well as environmental costs. From the sixteenth century on, deforestation became a bigger problem than earlier owing to over-use of timber to meet the increasing demands for ships and for smelting ores, such as gold, silver, and iron. The trend of moving more people and more goods for longer distances was given a mighty push in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since then it has accelerated, accompanied, from the later eighteenth century, by the steep rise in use of the fossil fuels, which has contributed to growing pollution and global warming in our own time. The beginnings were small steps. For nearly a century, Iberian seafarers explored the Atlantic islands close to Africa, and the Portuguese crept down the west coast of that continent. Then, during a third of a century starting in 1492, mariners sponsored by Spanish and Portuguese rulers set out on long-distance voyages. They did not set off into the unknown. They thought they knew their destinations, but they were looking for previously unknown routes to reach them. Spaniards went looking for an alternative and more direct route to the spices and other treasures of the Indies. Instead, they came across huge amounts of gold, silver, and land in the Americas, which they proceeded to conquer, subdue, and exploit, using unfree labor. The Portuguese first looked for gold in West Africa. Their search led them gradually to the carriers and sources of the spice https://whfua.history.ucla.edu/ Page 4 World History for Us All Big Era 6 Landscape 1 trade. They used their cannon-equipped ships, based at forts and trading stations along the edges of the Indian Ocean, to intimidate or eliminate competitors. Their aim was to establish a monopoly over the distribution of spices and, more generally, of sea-borne trade in the region. In the course of their search, between them the mariners sailing from Iberia made a series of revolutionary discoveries.

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